When I took an oil portrait painting class in art school, my teacher told us to use at least two layers of white gesso to prime the canvas. So that’s how I did it over ten years. 

Only recently, I started to use colored acrylics as my primer and underpainting. 

The reason: it’s quick and more efficient. 

First of all, as long as you use at least two layers of acrylics before applying oil paint, your canvas will be ok.

Second, acrylics dry fast and flat. 

I use acrylics to lay out the large structures and primary colors of the painting to get a grip on how the picture will turn out. Then I paint oil over it.

Third, it’s simply time-saving.

 I use oil to do detailed areas like faces or skin. Or the areas need rich and nuanced colors. Oil is perfect for mixing and blending for that purpose.  But when it comes to places that I feel already look good, like some background areas,  I will leave it alone. So to save time, and my paintings will also shows the spontaneous and raw energy when I first lay down my brushes.

Acrylics is great, but I just love the richness of oil and the nuance of colors it can create. 

See my newest painting, the before oil and after oil pictures, below. 

Last, many artists have asked me how to improve their portrait painting skills. And I’ve seen so many of them making the mistake of taking course after course but still seeing little to no improvement in their quality of work.  And that’s just backward. 

So I am putting together a mini course for free to teach artists three simple steps to paint a portrait that would help them get a grip on the foundation of portrait painting. Would this be of interest to you? Please let me know. 

The post Why you should try to paint oil over acrylics appeared first on Ying McLane.

This happened to me during the COVID pandemic.

Like so many of you, the pandemic had beaten down my creative spirit to a state of dormancy for over a year. I don’t think I touched my brushes one time during that period.

After things finally got better, I started to have visions in my head: images of women floating underwater, some of them meditating, some of them reaching for the surface. So I created a series of paintings about those visions.

Then one day, I was staring at a big blank canvas. I suddenly had the inspiration to paint the face of Jesus with unusually bright background colors. I also have a gold pen handy, so I scribbled many prophetic Hebrew words about God and Jesus onto it.

Now I know I was creating prophetic art.

In short, prophetic art is created with the Holy Spirit. Thus, it can also be called spirit art.

When I saw women underwater, the Holy Spirit whispered in my ear: paint the images to express this idea: the weight and depth of troubled time can not dim the God-breathed and nurtured human spirit of resilience.

My painting of Jesus is a piece of even more apparent evidence that the Holy Spirit had inspired me.

I Corinthians 3:9 points out:” For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.”(NIV)

Friends, as you can see, we are called to be co-workers of God. Our Father is the Alpha and Omega, the creator of the universe, so we are also called to be His co-creators on this earth— what a noble task!

To know more about prophetic art, check out my mentor Matt Tommey:s article here: https://www.matttommeymentoring.com/what-is-prophetic-art.html

To read more about my thoughts on art and God, check out my post:

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